Recent World

1. Bernd-Jurgen Brandes

Bernd-Jurgen Brandes was stabbed repeatedly in the neck and then eaten by Armin Meiwes. Before the killing, both men dined on Brandes' severed penis. Brandes had answered an internet advertisement by Meiwes looking for someone for this purpose. Brandes explicitly stated in his will that he wished to be killed and eaten. This is referred to in the song "Mein Teil" by German NDH band Rammstein.

Armin Meiwes is a German cannibal who achieved international notoriety for eating the penis of a voluntary Brandes he had found via the Internet.

more information about Armin Meiwes :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4752797.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3286721.stm

2. Brian Douglas Wells

Brian Douglas Wells (November 15, 1956 – August 28, 2003) was a pizza deliveryman who was killed by a time bomb explosive fastened to his neck, purportedly under duress from the maker of the bomb. After he was apprehended by the police for robbing a bank, the bomb exploded. The bizarre affair was subject to much attention in the mass media. On February 16, 2007 the Associated Press reported that "the case has been solved and indictments are expected, likely by next month." As of May 13, 2007, the grand jury has not handed down any indictments, although newspaper reports have identified three suspects in the plot.

more information about Brian Douglas Wells :
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-09-17-pizzaman-case-usat_x.htm
http://blogs.salon.com/0001424/categories/fgaqCrimeBlotter/

3. Brandon Carl Vedas

Brandon Carl Vedas (April 21, 1981 – January 12, 2003), (also known by his nickname ripper on IRC) was a member of the Shroomery.org community who died of an overdose on mostly prescription drugs. His death led to considerable debate about the responsibilities and roles of online communities in life-threatening situations.

The chat/webcam session apparently began by Vedas smoking cannabis in preparation, and then logging into the #shroomery IRC channel. Upon entering the channel he announced “I've got a grip of drugs” and indicated that his webcam was up, and that chatters were welcome to view his “grip of drugs” and his subsequent ingestion of them. While some of the substances were illicit drugs (e.g. cannabis), most of them had apparently been obtained through legitimate prescriptions for treatment of various illnesses that Vedas was said to have suffered.

Vedas then began consuming Psilocybe mushrooms, which had been stored in a prescription medication bottle. As the chat session progressed, one of the users in the channel, grphish, noted “that's a lot of klonopin” and this is thought to be when Vedas consumed 8 mg of clonazepam (Klonopin). Vedas continued by showing the webcam viewers what would be one of four bottles of methadone that he would consume over the course of the session, and, after noting this on the channel, proceeded to consume an entire bottle (reportedly 80 mg of methadone). After a brief respite, Vedas then consumed 110 mg of propranolol (Inderal), two Vicodin tablets, and 120 mg temazepam (Restoril), which seem to have been taken in-between descriptions given on the IRC channel.

During this process, Vedas maintained that this was "usual weekend behavior" for him and that he had consumed similar quantities of the same substances on previous occasions. The quote "i told u i was hardcore" was one of the last things Vedas ever said, and is often used sarcastically on internet message boards and discussion sites to refer to this incident.

Upon consuming the remainder of the original batch of drugs from the beginning of the webcam session, Vedas began to retrieve and prepare to consume even more drugs that he had stashed throughout the room. It was at this point that the users of the channel began to voice their concerns that Vedas was taking things too far. Some pleaded with him to stop while others recommended that he seek immediate medical attention. After taking another large quantity of the same drugs he had already ingested, Vedas gave instructions that if anything were to go wrong, that they should try to contact him by calling his cell phone, and if that didn't work, they should call the local authorities and give them the license plate number of his car, which was parked in his driveway and could easily be seen from the street.

When Vedas lost consciousness, users of the chatroom considered informing the police and asking that they trace Vedas's cellphone in order to locate him. However, the members of the channel were hesitant to contact the authorities for fear of involving Vedas and/or themselves in a police investigation. According to the chat logs, one user had even called 9-1-1 and asked the group if he was doing the right thing. After an emphatic "NO" response from another user, the user said "I talked my way out of it." and claimed that the police told them that there was no way to find Vedas with the information available.

more information about Brian Douglas Wells :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Vedas
http://www.legacy.com/azcentral/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonId=725033

4. Timothy Treadwell

Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard--AP Photo 2003

Timothy Treadwell (April 29, 1957 – October 5, 2003), born Timothy Dexter, was an American environmentalist and bear enthusiast who lived among the coastal grizzly bears of Katmai National Park in Alaska for approximately 13 seasons. At the end of his thirteenth season in the park in 2003, he and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard (age 37) were killed and partially eaten by a grizzly bear. An audio recording of the attack survived. Treadwell's life, work, and death were the subject of the 2005 documentary film by Werner Herzog titled Grizzly Man.

more information about Timothy Treadwell :
http://www.yellowstone-bearman.com/Tim_Treadwell.html

5. Kenneth Pinyan

Kenneth Pinyan (June 22, 1960 - July 2, 2005) was a Seattle, Washington resident who engaged in sexual activity with full-size stallions near Enumclaw, Washington, some of which he videotaped and distributed informally under the name Mr Hands. His death at the age of 45 from accidental internal injury (perforated colon), in July 2005, received during a sex act being videotaped by a friend of his, was one of the most read stories in The Seattle Times for that year,[1] and prompted the passing of a bill in Washington State prohibiting both sex with animals, and the videotaping of the same, some months later.

A video often named Mrhands.mpg showing a stallion having anal sex with Pinyan is sometimes used as a shock video on the internet; however, this is not the video of the fatal accident.[citation needed] A documentary of the life and death of Pinyan, and the life led by those who came to the farm near Enumclaw as he did, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival 2007 under the title Zoo. It was one of 16 winners out of 856 candidates for the festival,[2] and played at numerous regional festivals in the USA thereafter.[3] Following Sundance, it was also selected as one of the top five American films to be presented at the "prestigious" Directors Fortnight sidebar at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.

more information about Kenneth Pinyan :
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002384648_farm16m.html

6. Lee Seung Seop

Lee Seung Seop ( born c. 1977, died August 10, 2005) was an industrial boiler repairman in Taegu, South Korea. On August 3, 2005, he achieved global notoriety when he visited a nearby Internet cafe and proceeded to play World of Warcraft and StarCraft for almost fifty consecutive hours. Ultimately exhaustion and dehydration induced heart failure and he went into cardiac arrest. He died shortly thereafter at a local hospital. A friend commented: "He was a game addict. We all knew about it. He couldn't stop himself." About six weeks before his death, his girlfriend, also an avid gamer, broke up with him, and he had been fired from his job for missing work to play computer games.

7. Steve Irwin

Steve Irwin, a television personality and naturalist known as The Crocodile Hunter, died when his heart was impaled by a short-tail stingray barb while filming a documentary entitled "Ocean's Deadliest" in Queensland's Great Barrier Reef.

more information about Lee Seung Seop :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Irwin#Death

8. Alexander Litvinenko

Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB operative and Russian expatriate who had been investigating the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, was poisoned by polonium-210, an extremely rare radioactive metalloid

more information about Alexander Litvinenko :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko

9. Jennifer Strange

Jennifer Lea Strange and her husband, William, are pictured with their children: Keegan Sims, 10, Ryland Strange, 3, and Jorie Strange, 11 months.

Jennifer Lea Strange was a 28-year-old woman who died of water intoxication on January 12, 2007 after taking part in a Sacramento, California, radio station's water-drinking contest. Strange, along with twenty other participants, took part in a contest held by KDND-FM's "Morning Rave" show called "Hold Your Wee for a Wii," where the winner would win a Wii, a popular and at that time difficult-to-obtain Nintendo video game console. The winner was the one who could consume the most water without urinating. Strange came in second place; it was not immediately known how much water Strange consumed, but other contestants speculate that Strange drank up to two gallons of water .

Her mother found the body in the Sacramento suburb of Rancho Cordova, California, after Strange called her supervisor at her job to say she was heading home in terrible pain. Preliminary autopsy findings have ruled the death was due to water intoxication.

more information about Jennifer Strange :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Strange
http://waterintoxication.org/

10. Kevin Whitrick

Kevin Whitrick (1965 – 2007-03-23) was a British citizen and an electrical engineer. He is believed to be the first and only British person to have committed a cyber suicide live via a webcam on an internet chat site. His death came as a shock to his friends and family. Whitrick was said to be "a loving father and family man. He was the life and soul of the party and an extremely considerate and kind person. He will be so sadly missed by us all". Whitrick's interest in computers led to him being a respected person on the TOCA Touring Car series of games, who have all paid respects to him on their respective forums.

more information about Kevin Whitrick :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Whitrick
http://www.shropshirestar.co.uk/2007/03/police-probe-internet-death//

11. Martin Harris (train surfer)

Martin Kelly Harris was a Danish train surfer, aged 22, who was killed on the evening of 12 May 2007 while surfing an Arriva regional train between Lem and Ringkobing in western Jutland, Denmark.

Harris had been attending a football match in Herning with friends and was heading home to Ringkobing. At the last station before Ringkobing, he suddenly left the train. This puzzled his friends who were not aware he would continue the ride on the roof. On the segment between the two stations, the train passes under two viaducts. Martin Harris was killed at the second (northern) viaduct where the free height is only 74 cm. It has been speculated he may have been aware of the first viaduct but forgot there was a second one. Witnesses didn't notice the dead body on the roof of the train until it passed a road crossing just after Ringkobing station, and police brought the train to halt before the next station, named Hee.

He is reportedly the first death victim of train surfing in Denmark.